


Demons

by orphan_account



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16401485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ray loves Halloween, but this year it's just a bit too much.





	Demons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wearestardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearestardust/gifts).



> I really enjoyed your prompts, and it took me a while to decide exactly which one I wanted to go with for this fic.

“Well, I’m never going to look at a pumpkin the same way again.”

 

“Does that mean you’re going to put away that Halloween costume that I caught you fabricating last night?”

 

“It does not; I’m watching all of those movies dressed like Jack Skellington and no one can stop me.”

 

“That’s fair. And if Ray stays in the shower for much longer, you'll probably still have that real pumpkin smell.”

 

Ray closes his eyes as he listens to the rest of the team veer off to talk about which horror movies they’re going to watch tonight. Sara and Mick want slasher movies, of course, while Nate and Zari want the heart-warming ones.

 

“Ray can be the deciding vote,” Sara says when Mick and Nate argue so loudly that they sound like they’re just outside the shower instead of outside the bathroom.

 

Ray doesn’t want to watch anything. He doesn’t want to do anything other than scrub the rest of the blood and dirt from his hair and skin, crawl into bed, and sleep for the next week, maybe even longer.

 

It’s not exactly unusual for a mission to go badly. In fact, missions almost always go badly at first. No. What’s unusual and all kinds of exhausting is that the mission didn’t end well. The possessed victim had made a deal with the monster that had been using her as a puppet because it was still a better option than her old life. They’d saved the village but they’d lost the person they’d been trying to save.

 

People being killed, Ray can deal with. He’s never been very good at dealing with situations where someone chooses _not_ to be saved. Something in his brain always screeches to a halt when it happens. People are supposed to want to be saved. That's how it's supposed to work. They're not supposed to want the bad ending.

 

Nate knocks on the door just hard enough that Ray hears it over the water. “Hey, Ray, buddy, are you okay?”

 

"Come on, Haircut, you're using up all the hot water."

 

There's a long pause as the others wait for his usual response -- that the Waverider can't run out of hot water -- but Ray simply calls, "Sorry, I don't think I'm going to be watching anything tomorrow."

 

 

 

It’s always the little things that Ray notices. The movies that appear in his room without Ray even thinking about seeing if he can get a copy. The books that he’s mentioned he lost years ago – including the one that Ray mentioned was his favourite as a child.

 

The bowl of candy corn that shows up in the lab, that Gideon promises is free from every single thing that Ray’s allergic to.

 

It’s not a mystery as to who put it there – it’s Mick’s most basic gift-giving technique, right before him leaving something in a rarely checked location and hoping that they won’t realise that it’s new. Ray's spent two birthdays pretending that he has no idea where he picked up things that he's fairly certain were stolen from labs throughout time.

 

“I didn’t think you were the candy corn type,” Ray says as he enters the darkened room, holding out the bowl. They're far enough from the rest of the team that he can barely even hear whatever they're watching (it sounds like a horror movie, so Sara must have bribed Nate).

 

“I’m not.”

 

He doesn’t care about the movie that’s paused either, because he's never managed to get Mick to sit through The Nightmare Before Christmas. Or the pumpkin that Ray suspects he got someone else to help him carve (because the last one had been turned into pumpkin pie by Nate and Zari when Mick had given up.)  And Ray wants to laugh thinking about how much fun Mick probably didn’t have trying to put up the Halloween decorations that he’s complained are goofy for the last three years.

 

“You hate Halloween.”

 

Mick shrugs, gesturing to the empty seat beside him. “You don’t.”

 

"I'm not in a celebrating mood, Mick."

 

"What's there to celebrate? It's a stupid holiday and a good excuse to eat and drink whatever you want." Mick hands Ray a beer as Ray sinks into the seat. "It wasn't your fault, Haircut. She made her choice and you made yours."

 

Ray drinks more of the beer than he usually would, so quickly that he almost chokes on it. His eyes sting. "Her mind is going to be slowly burned out by a creature until there's nothing left of her, then it's going to walk around in her body until the body breaks down. I could have helped John remove it. I could have stopped her."

 

"But you didn't. Instead, you saved the village. You saved hundreds of people."

 

"And all it cost was letting one person doom themselves to a horrific death."

 

Mick presses play and leans back in his chair. "You did the only thing you could."

 

"Did I?" Ray asks as he picks a few pieces of candy corn out of the bowl.

 

Mick doesn't reply.


End file.
